When The Dust Settles
by doesnotloveyou
Summary: Nomad's Avengers are dumbstruck. What just happened? And where's Earth Greatest Defender? Meanwhile, on Titan, Tony Stark is asking similar questions as he stares at the blood and ashes on his hands, his only surviving ally a cold alien cyborg with vengeance percolating in her psyche. (post-Infinity War)
1. Earth

"Okay, but where's Tony?" she asks. "Does anyone know where he went or who he was with?"

They look around, some at Rocket who continues staring at the floor with his head in his paws.

"He left with the wizard," says Bruce, "the wizard with the Time Stone."

"Strange?" Thor asks. "No, that…"

Each of them looks again at the others. Steve sets his mouth in a grim line. "Thanos had the Time Stone."

She looks at Bruce and swallows hard. "Okay. So, Tony left Earth with a Stone…and Thanos…came back with the Stone and no Tony."

"Or wizard," Thor says softly.

She looks at the ceiling, holding back tears, knowing they all expect her to cry.

Rocket sniffles and a few eyes turn on him. He wipes his snout, stating brokenly, "He had the Power Orb and that other one, the one from Knowhere."

Thor clenches his jaw as hard as he can.

"That means…my friends were on their way…and Xandar." Rocket momentarily fists his paws before relaxing them again. "Thor…Thor, I let them—"

"No, don—don't dwell on it, rabbit. We fought him with all six stones, there's still a chance—"

"There's no chance," snaps Rhodes, "because who he didn't kill he just took. He just took them. They're gone. Thor? Do you hear me? Gone."

Rocket curls up into the smallest ball he can, trying unintentionally to think like a basic animal again. Thor turns his good eye on Rhodes, flicking a look at Steve, but Steve has nothing to add or detract from this conversation. He looks vacant himself, exhausted, distant. Humans wear out fast, even when they shouldn't.

The other three regress into the shadows of the room, away from the ashen simulcra corpse of Vision, from the crater in his forehead that once held life, from the crippled and hopeless champions, and from the rage of mourning.

Persistent as ever, the sun sets, swallowing them in twilight.


	2. Titan

"Was he your son?"

Tony flinches at the cyborg's voice, having forgotten she was there. "No. No, he's…"

Ashes on a godforsaken hunk of lifeless rock. Not even Earth, not even home; light-years from home. Should've just gone to the MoMa, should've just done as he was told, should've…

He continues cradling the hands that held Peter.

He wouldn't have been safe anywhere. None of them. He messed up somewhere, should've given Strange more time, shouldn't have focused so much on himself, shouldn't have...shouldn't have failed. _God_ , had he failed.

Tony glances sideways at the cyborg woman who appeared mid-conflict at no surprise to Thanos. Biologically she's just pieces of some blueberry-skinned alien race; an eye, a hand, a cheekbone. And he'd been concerned over some shrapnel.

The woman has her elbows resting on her knees, looking vacantly at the debris-strewn ground, watching ash float away in the low-gravity. There's a low whining sound coming from her electronics, a settling down, a whisper of mechanical anxiety. Tony swallows the hard lump in his throat; tasting iron and bile, flinching as he irritates his wound by turning to face her better.

"Who's Gamora?"

...

The transport she, Nebula, came in had been critically damaged by her violent landing; he could recognize the signs of emotional rage anywhere. Besides, she seemed very familiar with Quill's ship.

"I can...fix that," he offers half-heartedly, pointing vaguely to a crooked joint in one of her legs. She ignores him, taking a seat in the cockpit and doing nothing once she's there.

Tony stays put too where she's abandoned him on a small bench in the cargo bay. He sniffs, looks at his empty hands again, looks out at the dump they've just walked in from, and sticks out his jaw.

"Hey, Bionic Woman, I get it, dad's aren't worth the carbon they're made of. You don't know me, but this isn't—"

"I don't intend on knowing you," she utters. "Thanos is not and has never been my father."

"No, he's your captor. Your abuser, your owner. See it all the time back on Earth; warlord kills a family and keeps the kid. Stockholms the shit out of it, raises it as a soldier, _voila_. That's wrong, but I'm a little preoccupied with my own disasterous dynamic here—I'm from Earth yet I'm not on Earth. Thanos just took one of the few things I won't trade and I'm getting it back, but to do that I have to get to Earth."

"He's not on Earth." Maddening Terran. She's not sure how he got involved, but he seemed to know Quill and is all she's got left to work with. "He's gotten what he wanted and he's left."

"Then I need to know _what_ he's left." Tony's leant so far forward, voice rising, that he's struggling to ignore the throbbing pain in his side, in his head, in his throat. "And I need to know where he's gone, and that we can get there in this—"

"You're in no shape to—"

"I don't care, he took what's ours."

Nebula narrows her eyes over her shoulder. He's a small man, severely wounded, old as humans get, weak enough to care about someone; likely many someones back on Earth—likely many _erased_ someones. Yet Thanos knew his name. And he made him bleed. She'd never before seen Thanos bleed.

The ramp rises and Nebula starts the ship. Satisfied, Tony feels a flutter in his chest as he looks back at the slivering planet as the ramp closes. There were people down there. Standing, breathing. He'll be leaving them behind, again. Like he left Yinsen, like he left Maya, like he left Zemo's family and others.

"I'll find him myself." She sets her jaw as she stares straight ahead. "But first I'm going to Earth to find the rest of Gamora's crew. You do whatever you want."

The ship lifts off and he becomes nauseated, clinging to himself, and for once dreading home.


	3. Nomad

The world had shrunk to the size of a pinhead when Bucky hit the ground in a heap of ash, and stayed that way up until the first Wakandan mourning cry reached his ear.

General Okoye and her countrymen grieved loudly. There was no stoicism even among the shocked. The battlefield was a haunted graveyard of scattered wails. Rapid Xhosa, bubbling over, crashing with sobs among warriors he respectfully feared.

Someone collapsed beside him just out of his view. They didn't disintegrate, but she leant her head on his shoulder, gasping…retching. She pulled away quickly, but though he knew he should, he didn't move to help her. Odd, he felt just like when he'd wake up to an asthma attack as a kid, paralyzed by an invisible weight pressing down on his chest. If he took a deep breath his ribs might snap.

For these three, small, blissful seconds, the Earth stood still. Then panic set in.

It felt like the Blitz except amplified, exacerbated, and with no preparation to fall back on. Planes crashed, ships ran aground. Swathes of urban areas lost power, lines of communication quickly severed. People taking to the streets, to the rooftops, escaping to the vacant wilderness. He couldn't hear them, not yet, not there on the matted jungle floor with Vision's corpse at his feet. But he knew. People were still dying. And he couldn't save a single one.

...

T'Challa's sister trembled like a leaf, tearstains unabashedly left on her cheeks. She sat to the right of her mother who held the throne. Okoye, M'Baku, and one other leader stood or sat as well, making it a broken semi-circle that faced Steve now. The Queen Regent sat rigid, chin stiff, eyes clear. Only her fingers fretted over the rings on her hands.

He didn't know why—exhaustion, humility, remorse—but Steve couldn't bear to stand before them. He knelt. The Avengers followed his lead, kneepads and armor touching the smooth floor. Thor bowed his head with clenched fists.

Steve opened his mouth to speak, but Ramonda preempted him.

"Go, with our blessing. We can still care for our own. Others need you more."

M'Baku's lower lip quivered, but he met Steve's eyes and nodded solemnly. Shuri could not meet anyone's eyes, hands knotted in her lap. If she'd just had a little more time…if she'd just been quicker…this was all her fault.

Steve read as much in the girl's expression. He didn't have it in him to reassure her, but he wanted to.

"May—" Ramonda hesitated. "May your gods be with you."


	4. The Benatar

Quill's ship is exactly what Tony had imagined; the hectic and untidy interior anyhow. He comments on the one or two logical minutiae—a neatly placed warning label, a neatly stored weapon or folded garment—and after his fifth strand of positive commentary, Nebula replies softly with, "Gamora."

He decided he was talking too much.

He found the first aid kit ransacked despite Gamora's best efforts to keep it in a safe place. Still, his guts aren't falling out and no internal organs seem to be failing him, yet. Thanos hadn't seemed like one to leave a job half-finished…shit.

His labored breathing eventually catches Nebula's attention as she just barely stops him from falling onto a sharp object and forcefully seats him at the helm. So he stays, a little alarmed by her strength, and feeling his remorse settle heavier than a trunk of lead.

He can hear her rustling through the supplies he'd unearthed, then through the belongings of the absent crew.

"Where's all the food?" she asks, rhetorically.

His brain stutters. One-way ticket, that's how he put it. Peter may not have believed or really thought about it—kids are too optimistic, short-sighted—but he knew that planet would be the end…did he know?

 _"Where, is, it?"_ Nebula stops moving.

He cringes as he resettles his body in the chair, pain creeping in from the side. "There's no food?"

Silence. Then, movement. Nebula returns to the bridge.

"We'll have to ration it. There's no trading stations on our planned course, and what there is will be looted before we get there." She leans over the console, checking navigation. "There's far less than there should be."

Tony looks out the viewscreen—Star Trek taught him that, he doesn't know the real word—for a split second at eternity. Looks away again, breathing harder now, afraid to close his eyes and see only black. He stares at the back of his hand to ground himself, familiar veins and wrinkles reminding him he's alive.

Temporarily, in what may turn out to be an airtight tomb.

"Hope for an abandoned merchant vessel," Nebula says under her breath. "One with spare fuel."


	5. The Quinjet

Ultron beat them once. Zemo left them shattered. Thanos walked right past them like they weren't even there. Each time, Steve gathered his team and got back on the quinjet.

Once the ramp was raised, everyone quietly collapsed in their own way. Thor had been adamant that the raccoon come with them, Rocket he was called. This all had to be a dream.

Steve's attention was caught by Natasha racking a gun in her locker, one he didn't remember her having on the battlefield. Her movements were stiff, but her lip quivered as she stopped to stare at the weapon with her hand still on it. Swallowing hard and giving a slight gasp, she slid the rack shut and turned toward him. No gentle smirk, no wry confidence, nothing in her expression to say she was her usual self. Just, guilt.

Rhodes was the pilot, his jaw stiff and his chin held high. Steve saw him shaking, heard him muttering to himself occasionally. A seasoned veteran, a true soldier…Steve couldn't handle that right now. He wanted to fall back on his training, to be emotionless when the situation called for it, but that was so you'd win the war. They'd just lost the last war that would ever matter.

Natasha didn't go near him after racking the gun, and instead found Bruce somewhere in one of the dark corners. He wasn't who she wanted to see, in fact she almost regretted walking over to him from the strange aching in her joints. But she needed to hold something and Bruce always needed to be held.

Thor had removed his armor and left it on the floor of the ship, brooding on his own in a t-shirt and leather leggings. Steve wanted to hear from anyone, but primarily from him, that this was all a trick. A bizarre magic trick, a light show, something cosmically accidental, things Thor knew better than he did. The last thing he needed was for Thor to clam up on him, even if he couldn't blame him.

He wanted to turn to Sam for sound reasoning instead, _needed_ to hear that soothing tone he could put on, the one he used in the classes he used to teach. He needed Peggy to wake him up and make him think straight. Needed Buck to clap him on the back and remind him at least they had each other. Needed Tony for…just needed to know where he was. Maybe even ask why Bruce was the one to call instead of him. Not that that was anywhere near a priority right now, just…

Steve sat upright with a deep breath through his nostrils. All eyes lifted toward him. Internally, he kicked himself. He'd gotten their hopes up. He didn't have a plan. He barely had anything.

"We're coming in, Cap," Rhodes announced softly.

A brief skittering of claws on the floor of the jet as Rocket tripped over Thor's armor, followed by disgruntled swearing. Steve watched out of the corner of his eye as the animal casually walked to the nearest window at his height and pressed his paws to the glass. He'd, never seen Earth before today, had he? Steve thought again about Bucky, about how he'd been made to forget where he was from, the torture he'd been through. There were metal pieces embedded in Rocket's back, insufficiently concealed by his vest, that made Steve cringe internally.

Who here hadn't been at war their entire lives? Who down below wasn't fighting one now?


	6. Ea r t h

As the alien ship sucked away into the atmosphere, quickly becoming a pinprick in the clear blue sky, New York and anyone else watching held their breath. Many reacted with grace, falling into line with protocols set in place after the Incident. There was a sense of organized chaos in New York long before the rest of the world let out a sigh of relief. But a crescendo was rising online. A crackle of hastily uploaded videos of Iron Man disappearing into the afternoon sky led to a fast-growing din of fear and anger.

Night fell on New York and people fell exhausted into bed.

Dawn broke on Edinburgh and unease heightened there too. An early morning tweet from a traveler on the tram claimed they'd just spotted several heavily geared individuals facing off under the fluorescent lighting of Waverly station. This matched the dismaying mess discovered in the station when it was unlocked in the early hours, and it matched also the uploaded tourist pics of St. Giles Cathedral as it was being cordoned off.

Until Iron Man returned with that smarmy grin and piece-of-cake attitude, no one aware of the crisis could spend their day relaxed. Many pretended to, many dismissed the threat, but there was an electric current in the air raising hairs along the backs of necks in every community. Aliens had returned, Iron Man had left, and the fugitive Avengers had stirred—classically leaving destruction in their wake.

To some, that meant all was well. Nothing worse had happened, their saviors had obviously done their work and silently returned home. To others, it marked the beginning of a new sticky mess politicians and corporations would "have to" detangle like the last one.

A full day passed.

At first, it seemed like the precursor to a volcanic eruption, or offal from a large furnace. Fine, feathery ash drifted over any place humans existed. It clung to windshields, sighed across carpets, nestled in people's hair, and tickled their mouths and ears. Some woke up to it in their beds, their kitchens and backyards. Some saw it rush the ceilings of airplanes as their hearts jumped into their throats, while others saw it miles wide coating the waves. Some even found it tainting the playgrounds and cradles.

From Earth there came a low, animalistic groan, one that echoed across the galaxy before rebounding as a many-tongued chorus. On some planets it was barely a murmur, on others a pained roar.

The universe fell to its knees and wept.


End file.
